HONG KONG: Hong Kong stocks reversed earlier gains and closed at a five-week low on Wednesday, led lower by material and real estate firms, which tracked their peers on the mainland market.
At close of trade, the Hang Seng index was down 272.22 points or 0.89 percent at 30,323.20. The Hang Seng China Enterprises index fell 2 percent to 12,433.29.
The sub-index of the Hang Seng tracking energy shares dipped 1.1 percent while the IT sector rose 0.93 percent, the financial sector was 1.11 percent lower and property sector dipped 2.22 percent.
The top gainer on Hang Seng was Hengan International Group Company Ltd up 2.03 percent, while the biggest loser was China Resources Land Ltd which was down 7.67 percent.
China's main Shanghai Composite index closed down 1.81 percent at 3,309.5844 points while its blue-chip CSI300 index ended down 2.38 percent.
Around the region, MSCI's Asia ex-Japan stock index was weaker by 0.15 percent while Japan's Nikkei index closed up 0.16 percent.
The yuan was quoted at 6.2602 per US dollar at 08:09 GMT, 0.33 percent firmer than the previous close of 6.281.
As of the previous trading session, the Hang Seng index was up 2.26 percent this year, while China's H-share index was up 8.3 percent. As of the previous close, the Hang Seng has declined 6.97 percent this month.
The top gainers among H-shares were Byd Co Ltd up 0.22 percent, followed by Huaneng Power International Inc gaining 0.4 percent and CGN Power Co Ltd up by -0.48 percent.
The three biggest H-shares percentage decliners were China Citic Bank Corp Ltd which was down 5.45 percent, China Merchants Bank Co Ltd which fell 5.3 percent and China Vanke Co Ltd down by 4.4 percent.
About 4.76 billion Hang Seng index shares were traded, roughly 165.6 percent of the market's 30-day moving average of 2.88 billion shares a day. The volume traded in the previous trading session was 5.70 billion.
At close, China's A-shares were trading at a premium of 36.47 percent over the Hong Kong-listed H-shares.
The price-to-earnings ratio of the Hang Seng index was 13.94 as of the last full trading day while the dividend yield was 2.9 percent.
So far this week, the market capitalisation of the Hang Seng index has fallen by 6.44 percent to HK$20.01 trillion.
The short and one-factor leveraged Hang Seng index, which is designed to replicate the payoff of a short or leveraged portfolio and is linked to the movements of the Hang Seng Index, was higher by 0.89 percent on the day at 4,846.69 points.
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